3,000 practices in Emis Web

More than 2,000 GP practices in England and Wales have upgraded to Emis Web over the past year, bringing the total number of users to 3,000.

The number was revealed at the EMIS National User Group conference in Nottingham this week.

The high uptake of Emis’ latest GP IT system means that more than 4m GP consultations are now recorded on EMIS Web every week.

Neil Laycock, Emis managing director, said the company has migrated 2,000 practices to Web in the past year.

"It’s an incredible achievement for primary care and an incredible achievement for Emis," he told EHI.

"It is testament to the hard work that has gone into developing an innovative system that not only helps GPs provide the very best care, but also connects whole healthcare economies.”

The number includes the migration of 174 iSoft practices to Web, as support for CSC’s GP system will cease at the end of this month.

The user group conference includes a community, child and mental health stream for the first time this year.

Emis also used the conference as an opportunity to announce new functionality for Emis Mobile, which now allows users to view QOF alerts, add prescriptions to patient records and receive patient alerts.

A number of sessions at the conference focused on Patient Access: an online portal that allows patients to book and cancel appointments and view their patient record.

The government has promised that every patient who wants it will be able to have online access to their GP record by March 2015, however progress on this target has been slow.

Patient Access figures reveal that demand for transactional services is much higher than for record viewing. Over the past year, the service has transacted 300,000 prescription requests, 144,000 appointment requests, but only 3500 record view log-ins.